Greetings my friends – Great topic and posts! Construction is a designing, measuring, forming, and building project, one item at a time in a lineal fashion where one thing depends upon another thing and the order of their arranging depends upon a deciphering of engineering.
Growth is a natural result of nourishment, exercise, and time that requires no critical evaluation and planning for its result.
I think growth can be nurtured and given enhanced opportunity by self selected conditions but does not depend on analysis or even comprehension of the process itself. Love, service, sincerity, integrity, loyalty, intention, motivation – or our pursuit and appreciation for and expressions of truth, beauty, and goodness bring all desirable results….but its “form” may tilt or be not square or plumb from time to time. If this were a construction project, we would need to “de-construct” or tear down that which is not yet square and true. But with growth…..well, what grotesque forms I passed through from babe and toddler/wobbler and chubby youth to gangly teen with pimples and freckles and all that embarrassment to the handsome lad I became….eventually. No one would have purposefully constructed the stages of my natural growth into the specimen of bodacious manhood I was to become!!! (hahahahhahaha – humor to make the point).
I think the self forgetting issue is also key. Self absorption is a real potential of self evaluation. It is important, I think, to evaluate situations and intersections of choice based on prior experience and to gain more understanding of cause and effect and to divine our own true motives and intentions that lead to our decisions. But these are course corrections and response adjustments that do not require “critical” assessment I do not think. It seems to me that growth is self correcting when given the resources needed.
100:6.3 (1100.5) The marks of human response to the religious impulse embrace the qualities of nobility and grandeur. The sincere religionist is conscious of universe citizenship and is aware of making contact with sources of superhuman power. He is thrilled and energized with the assurance of belonging to a superior and ennobled fellowship of the sons of God. The consciousness of self-worth has become augmented by the stimulus of the quest for the highest universe objectives — supreme goals.
100:6.4 (1100.6) The self has surrendered to the intriguing drive of an all-encompassing motivation which imposes heightened self-discipline, lessens emotional conflict, and makes mortal life truly worth living. The morbid recognition of human limitations is changed to the natural consciousness of mortal shortcomings, associated with moral determination and spiritual aspiration to attain the highest universe and superuniverse goals. And this intense striving for the attainment of supermortal ideals is always characterized by increasing patience, forbearance, fortitude, and tolerance.
100:6.5 (1100.7) But true religion is a living love, a life of service. The religionist’s detachment from much that is purely temporal and trivial never leads to social isolation, and it should not destroy the sense of humor. Genuine religion takes nothing away from human existence, but it does add new meanings to all of life; it generates new types of enthusiasm, zeal, and courage. It may even engender the spirit of the crusader, which is more than dangerous if not controlled by spiritual insight and loyal devotion to the commonplace social obligations of human loyalties.
100:6.6 (1101.1) One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment. Such religionists are like the Apostle Paul, who said: “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
I am reminded of my own youth and that of children and grandchildren how the younger “strive” and “yearn” to do that which is just beyond reach and those just a little older or bigger can do. To run faster and jump higher. To master skills and tools. To achieve!! Parents must only serve and not obstruct such a natural process of growth to witness its miracle.
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
